After
the death of Henry IV in 1610, his widow, Marie de' Medici, became regent to
her son, Louis XIII. Having acceded to a much more powerful position, she
decided to erect a new palace for herself, adjacent to an old hôtel particulier
owned by François de Luxembourg, Duc de Piney, which is now called the Petit
Luxembourg and is the residence of the president of the French Senate.
Marie
de' Medici desired to make a building similar to her native Florence's Palazzo
Pitti; to this effect she had the architect Métezeau (either Louis Métezeau or
his brother, Clément Métezeau) sent to Florence to make detailed drawings of
the building. She bought the Hôtel de Luxembourg and its fairly extensive
domain in 1612 and commissioned the new building, which she referred to as her
Palais Médicis, in 1615. Its construction and furnishing formed her major
artistic project, though nothing remains today of the interiors as they were
created for her, save some architectural fragments reassembled in the Salle du
Livre d'Or. --- WikiPedia
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